and half a candle, One old jug without a handle–

Menu

Links on UK Labour’s Anti-Semitism Furore

There have been rumbles about anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party almost from day one. This is important because (among other reasons) Corbyn’s enemies within the party, and Labour’s enemies outside it, promote and “weaponise” these rumbles. The latest manifestation is wickedly timed to sabotage Labour’s prospects in the upcoming elections for local authorities, devolved governments, Police and Crime Commissioners and mayors in various combinations where applicable. The Tories like this for obvious reasons; the Labour “moderates” because, one imagines, they dream of ousting Corbyn and installing a charismatic Blair clone who will sweep to victory in 2020 and implement policies that are just a little bit kinder than the Tories’ (in a flattering light) but utterly inoffensive to Murdoch and the City.

Not being either a Jew or a Labour insider – and not, I hope and intend, an anti-Semite – I don’t have personal insight into this, but the facts underlying any specific allegation generally amount to

Guilt by association, sometimes hinging on events that hadn’t even happened at the time of the association; usually accompanied by the insistence that there are some people we shouldn’t even talk to or be polite to

Some hot and ill-considered choice of words; righteous anger about the treatment of Palestinians that sometimes gets a wider target than it probably deserves.

Confusion on all sides of the argument between Jews, Zionists, Israelis, the government of Israel, and various factions and subgroups of these. They are overlapping categories, of course, but it’s important to be clear which is meant.

Oh, and Ken Livingstone making provocative (even if broadly true) remarks for some opaque reason of his own.

I don’t doubt there is also real anti-Semitism, but I haven’t found much evidence of it in the public domain using the time and energy to hand. There could be systematic reasons for this, of course, including my own biases. (I might add some links to support this later, but for now it’s my own unsupported assertion.)

The story so far: the partisan Guido Fawkes blog dug up some old posts on social media by Naz Shah that could be construed as anti-Semitic in the broadest sense. She was suitably contrite and apologetic, because there is a time and a place to fight these battles; there were calls for her suspension, followed by confusion, hesitation, and then she was suspended pending investigation. Then Ken Livingstone, apparently trying to defend her, informed Vanessa Feltz (among others, I think) that Hitler had at one time colluded with Zionists to transport Jews to the area that is now Israel. Ken is historically correct, even if it’s hyperbole to say Hitler was therefore a Zionist; but it’s not clear why he thought this would be a useful thing to say. It wasn’t, of course, and he was both ambushed by John Mann on camera and suspended before the end of the day.

[Edited to add: I’m no longer at all sure Ken actually said words to the effect that “Hitler was a Zionist”, even as hyperbole or a rather poor joke. He said “Hitler supported Zionism” according to the Independent transcripts – which is a fair way of describing the Haavara agreement, but could I suppose be wrongly paraphrased by someone who thinks “support” applies to football teams. Hitler certainly did not support Zionism like a football team.

I haven’t worked out yet how mentioning the Haavara agreement was a salient response to questions on the meme posted by Shah about Hitler’s actions being legal, but it seems Ken thought it was. Some people apparently think, or affect to think, Shah meant by this to express approval for Hitler’s actions – and after thinking about this a little I can see how they make this mistake. But it is a mistake: the meme is not used to say that everything legal is safe and good, but that the law can allow powerful people to do bad things, and shouldn’t be accepted without question.

End of added part.]

If there are notable developments after that, I haven’t caught up with them yet. [Edit 3: and I’m not going to try to keep up with them in my own words, either.]

Any cursory glance at social media over the past week will show you just how many of Corbyn’s supporters want to see Israel overthrown and something like the old PLO solution imposed.

I haven’t seen anything nearly so forthright. I have seen suggestions that questioning the existence of Israel in its current form may not be entirely unthinkable, plus the Shah/Finkelstein meme about relocating Israel to the USA. Which is probably not a plan anyone seriously wants to advocate.

And that’s that, I think. It’s election day – Britain is voting variously for councillors, mayors, police commissioners and devolved governments. This issue will rumble on – the smears will continue, the Chakrabarti investigation will eventually deliver a result, and the measure of its success will be how firmly the accusations of whitewash and witch-hunt can be made to stick; some will continue to believe Labour has a minor but important problem, others will insist Labour is existentially flawed and deserves no decent person’s vote. But at this point the brouhaha has either done or failed to do the intended harm to Labour. I’d like today to give a serious setback both to the parasitic elite and its commensals in the Tory party, and to their deeply deluded (or cynical) emulators in Labour. Probably it won’t be nearly as good as that, but let’s hope it won’t be much worse.